The day afforded us an extra hour of sleep since we weren't moving to another destination today. Instead, we unloaded our panniers and cycled into the main part of town for our usual round of omelets and hot drinks.

He Who Walks with Cows

The kings of the Dahomey empire built conjoining palaces and all the buildings in the palatial compound were recreated except for a few walls where the (minimum) 41 wives were buried alive with the king upon his death. It was strange to know that the remaining mud walls were built with the blood of humans and animals.The Dahomey were an warrior society and their art and artifacts showed it: pictures of seemingly happy people in battle, decapitating, dismembering and disemboweling their enemies.

Centre of town.

One of the ubiquitous gas stations for the motorcycles.

Around 4:00pm Il ran breathlessly to announce there was an annual ritual sacrifice of a cow tonight so we gathered our bicycles and sped off to the site.

Selling oranges.

In the middle of the site a few people held a cow tightly to the ground. At first blush, an animal sacrifice sounds horrific and cruel. After mulling it over in my mind, I came to the conclusion that every cow should be so lucky to be afforded such respect, ceremony, and dignity in its death. In most places (such as Canada) they die unceremoniously and live their lives with much less freedom.

The cow was eventually surrounded by dancing Amazon warriors (ironically named from the semi-mythical Amazonian warriors—whereas female Dahomey warriors are a historical fact) and then a shroud of colourful blankets was lifted around the sacrifice. Like many other sacred rituals in other religions, this was a part that only the initiated could see or participate in. Shots were fired from somewhere nearby. We bowed lower. (No photos were allowed.) The dancing continued.

Eventually the curtain was lowered and I saw a few flicks of the cow's tail, which David insisted must be my imagination since it had been killed and possibly beheaded. (However, I do recall that fish gills keep moving for quite a while once the head has been cut off of a fish.) The dancing continued but it was dark and we decided it best to leave.

Crowed controllers.

The sacrificial cow.

We cycled down the dark, patchy roads back to our hotel. We learned from Jorgen that Lena was diagnosed with the most deadly strain of malaria (almost certainly caught back in Ghana) and she would need to undergo three days of treatment. That meant that Jorgen and Lena would have to stay behind and catch up to us via transport.

We had our first leisurely dinner tonight together (minus Lena) and filled ourselves up quite nicely with pasta, fish and fries and enjoying each other's company.Amusingly, the two Germans from our hotel back in Lomé were also at our hotel tonight. Small world.

Wikipedia sez:The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state founded in the seventeenth century which survived until 1894. In the early 1700s Dahomey conquered the Portuguese and French coastal trading forts of Allada and Whydah. Dahomey used to trade African slaves for European weapons.

Human sacrifices were not only made in time of war, pestilence, calamity, and on the death of kings and chiefs, they were also made regularly in the Annual Customs, believed to supply deceased kings with a fresh group of servants. Four thousand Whydahs, for example, were sacrificed when Dahomey conquered Whydah in 1727.The sacrifices for Gezo went on for days. Human sacrifice was usually done by beheading, except in the case of the king's wives, who were buried alive.

The Dahomey Amazons or Mino were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin) which lasted until end of the 19th century. They were so named by Western observers and historians due to their similarity to the semi-mythical Amazons of Ancient Greece.

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